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Vault 41
Located in central Iowa, Vault 41 was a part of the Vault-Tec Societal Preservation Program. However, like the majority of the Vaults, it was actually a front for the company’s twisted social experiments, performed on their unwitting residents. The Vault survived the deaths of its original inhabitants and has been recolonized by raiders from the Wastelands. History Construction of Vault 41 began in 2069 with a target completion date of 2075. The experiment was devised by Fred Wilson, a senior sociologist who had graduated from Vault-Tec University’s social engineering program. Pre-selection of the Residents was extensive, taken both from those who had signed up to the Vault program and those selected through rigged lotteries and other fake contests. This process allowed them to find the exact population that they wanted for their experiment. (Those that had family were reassured that those family would be sent to other Vaults. None of them were) Likewise, the staff were all carefully selected by Vault-Tec to ensure that they would create the environment that they wanted for the experiment. The residents were relocated as a part of the program in mid-2077 by Vault-Tec. On the morning of October 23rd, 2077, the residents were evacuated to the Vault, all arriving as expected. The Vault was sealed shut, with the residents then marshaled into their new home. It was only then that they realized the truth of the situation, as they were told in no uncertain terms that their lives were in the hands of Overseer Aesha Kwame, and that absolute obedience was expected. That she was backed by armed guards helped to underscore her point. At first, the shock of what had happened helped to quell the residents, making them somewhat compliant through recognizing the depth of their situation. Then came the collective realization that they were effectively being held prisoner by armed guards, and more to the point that the staff were made up of the very people that they hated. As expected, the residents became more and more resentful of the staff, but for the moment remained willing to comply. By the start of 2078 things had begun to change. The residents were becoming more and more openly resentful, and began acting out. This only encouraged the Staff to respond in kind, instituting harsh (and often public) punishments for even the most minor infractions. This only made them even more resentful, which in turn only resulted in further punishments. However, the residents were still sufficiently cowed by the armed guards to keep them from going too far. March of 2078 saw the first actual casualty among the residents. For a month the food service staff had been deliberately over-supplying Cletus Cassidy, one of the residents, with more food than anyone else. The other residents had noticed this, especially as the food staff had also been randomly shorting some of them on their meals. This lead to rumors that Cletus was in league with the staff and being rewarded for selling out his fellows. That escalated into accusations of his being a “race traitor” and so forth. Eventually, Cassidy was found dead in his room, hung with his bedclothes. Naturally this resulted in harsh punishments for all the residents, with rations shorted and what few liberties they had being temporarily suspended. However, rather then resenting the staff for their treatment, the residents began to turn on each other, blaming each other for their situations. With the Staff unassailable but hated, the residents were becoming more belligerent and looking for other options. Over the next three months there were several more deaths among the residents, each coming at the hands of their supposed fellows. By July of 2078 the residents had formed into distinct gangs, each opposed to the other and co-existing only under sufferance. Each of them was fueled rumors of supposed collaboration between the staff and the other groups, and violence became common. While the staff were still engaged in overt favoritism of certain individuals, they ever increasingly found that they didn’t need to do anything and instead would just rely on suspicion and accusation to give them the results that they wanted. Behind the scenes, some members of the staff were taking bets on who would be killed next. September proved to be the boiling point for the residents. A dispute between two members of rival gangs turned into a heated argument, and then a fight. That escalated into a riot, which required the intervention of armed guards to break up. Several more resident casualties resulted, both at the hands of each other and the guards. However, in the aftermath, Overseer Kwame was careful to not only assign blame to the residents, but to single out specific groups and even individuals. This served only to breed more resentment and then further violence between residents. This pattern of behavior would continue for the next two years as the residents continued to take out their frustrations on each other. Alliances would form and break up as the different gangs turned on each other while also seeking advantages over their rivals. There was some degree of churn at the gang level as well, as smaller and weaker ones were forcibly absorbed by their rivals. Many of these gangs were controlled less by any unifying ideology and more about simple power. Of course, the staff were careful to plant seeds of division within any gang that was seen to be becoming too powerful. As expected, the resident population continued to drop as members killed each other, although this was less often requiring prompting from the staff. On October 23rd, 2080, the overseer called a meeting of the senior staff. While all of them knew full well what the Vault’s actual role was, there had been growing concern among them as to their future. There had been no contact at all from Vault-Tec, and given that there had been a nuclear event, the overseer had far reason to assume that Vault-Tec still existed. However, external sensors suggested that the radiation levels outside the Vault were at a safe level. Considering the state of the Vault’s supplies and the degenerating situation among the residents, she felt it fair to say that the experiment had run its course and that the staff should be relieved of their duty. The decision was taken to leave the Vault and brave the outside world. The next day the Overseer put the accommodation wing into an emergency lockdown, sealing the residents inside their quarters for twenty-four hours. The staff then gathered what supplies they could carry, as well as the entirety of the Vault’s arsenal, and then departed to brave the outside world. The Vault Door was then sealed behind them, locked down by the Overseer. As expected, once released, the remaining residents were released from their quarters and realized that there were no staff left to control them, they turned on each other in a frenzy of violence. Within a month, there were none left alive. For over two centuries the Vault would remain empty, undiscovered and untouched by the outside world. That would change in 2284 when Motorhead, the leader of the War Machines raider gang came into possession of Overseer Kwame’s battered but still functional Pip-Boy. The device gave him the location of the Vault as well as the means to access it. Leading his gang to the Vault, Motorhead unsealed the door for the first time since the staff had left it and stepped inside. After confirming that it was empty (save for the skeletal remains of the residents), the gang claimed the Vault as their own, making it their new base of operations. Description The design of Vault 41 was somewhat different to the stock Vault in detail. Vault 41 was designed for 500 residents, with an additional 100 staff. The Vault’s interior and living spaces were designed to allow a degree of segregation between the staff and the residents. This not only included clearly delineated living facilities, but also a number of other alterations, ranging from security doors and bulletproof glass to walkways overlooking most every area. Even food services were separated, with the staff interacting with residents through security screens designed to protect them from attack. Vault 41’s experiment was somewhat multi-layered in its approach. The first part came in the selection of the staff and residents. The latter group were recruited from the ranks of various hate groups; Neo-Nazis, White Supremacists, Holocaust Deniers, Confederate Apologists, Men’s Rights Advocates and so on. This produced a deliberately homogeneous group of white men of similar political and social views. Conversely, the staff were selected from a wide array of different backgrounds and represented different genders, ethnicities, religious beliefs and so on. The second stage of the experiment lay in the interaction of the staff and residents. Compared to other Vaults, the residents were kept in almost prison-like conditions, and forced to obey the staff or else risk punishment. Basic needs such as food and water would only be provided to those who cooperated with staff. Likewise, the residents would be forced to perform labour (vault maintenance, farming and so on) under strict staff supervision. To emphasise the point, the staff were visibly armed; security personnel with submachineguns constantly patrolled the Vault from secure elevated walkways. The goal was to create a deliberate ‘us against them’ mentality among the residents to see how far they would be willing to cooperate. Finally, the Staff were encouraged to show favourable treatment towards certain residents. This could take the form of extra rations, assignment to soft duties, provision of additional luxuries and so on. At this stage of the experiment, the goal was to create internal divisions within the residents in order to pit them against each other and see how their aggression at their own dis-empowerment and inadequacies would be directed. While Vault 41 was designed to withstand a nuclear attack and provide a supposedly save haven for its residents, Vault-Tec had decided that should the experiment run as expected then it would not need to be equipped for long-term survival. The Vault was equipped with only enough food to last three and a half years, based on the expected rates of population decline. A deliberate lack of internal automation ensured that Vault maintenance would remain labour intensive, leaving the upkeep of the vault entirely dependant on the residents working under the close control of the staff. As can be expected, two hundred years without maintenance left the Vault in a somewhat decrepit state. Much of its equipment is only partially functional, or has broken down altogether. However, enough remains operational to ensure that it is a safe haven for the War Machines, including the operation of the Vault Door. The gang have redecorated the vault to suit their own sensibilities; not only have they covered it in their graffiti, but they have used the bones of the former residents as decorations. Inhabitants Aesha Kwame Like most Overseers, Aesha Kwame graduated through Vault-Tec University’s Overseer program. She showed considerable promise from the outset, earning high marks for administrative skills, staff and resident management and policy enforcement. However it was during a Vault Simulation run at VTU that she really distinguished herself in the eyes of the company. The VTU staff chose to deliberately short the Simulation Vault on supplies to see how she would react. Kwame’s response was to simply lock down a portion of the Simulation Vault population in their quarters, letting them starve while the rest of the vault lived. In her report, she explained that had chosen to keep as many people alive as she needed to get a passing mark. From the outset she held the residents of Vault 41 in contempt, seeing them for what they were; sad, pathetic men who used hate as an outlet for their own inadequacies. She held no reservations about what she was doing and letting the experiment run its course, even knowing that there had been a Nuclear War and that there may not even be a Vault-Tec to report to. None the less, she kept full records of all that had happened, and took them with her when she left the Vault. Despite her actions, Kwame did genuinely care for her staff and wanted them to be safe. Her decision to leave the Vault was one based om pragmatism and the need for survival, feeling that risking the outside world would be better than trying to contain the Vault’s population. She would eventually marry one of her staff and have two children; her descendants still live in the region two centuries later. Fred Wilson Self-describing as the “pastiest white nerd you would ever meet”, Fred Wilson graduated from Vault-Tec University’s sociology program. During his time there he showed an interest in behavioural modification, reactions to extreme duress and the lengths a man would go to ensure their own survival. Wilson crafted what would eventually become the Vault 41 Experiment in a thesis paper submitted for review by the university staff. It was not only accepted and well-received, but they chose to enact it with Wilson as a part of the experiment. During his time in Vault 41, Wilson was very detached from the residents whose lives he controlled. He saw them as experimental subjects and nothing else; it was not that he disliked them, but rather that he had no interest in them as human beings. In addition to carefully recording data and comparing it to his own models, he selected individuals for the staff to favour as a way of obtaining the most useful results. The first death in the vault, Cletus Cassidy, came exactly as he had predicted. Wilson was actually somewhat eager to leave the Vault, as he wanted to see what those who had lived through the Great War had willingly subjected themselves to in order to survive. He never got his chance, as he was shot and killed by Raiders a week after emerging. Jimmy Biggs Jimmy Biggs’ life was defined by failure; single, frequently unemployed, living in poverty and only barely educated. Rather then ever trying to redress these issues or their root cause, Biggs took to blaming others for his own failings, an attitude that bought him into the orbit of a white supremacist group. He eagerly joined their ranks, looking to vent his frustrations at his own inadequacies on others. This affiliation in turn saw him recruited for the Vault 41 experiment, an offer which he eagerly accepted. Inside the Vault, Jimmy’s cowardice and refusal to take responsibility would serve him well. As the violence within the Vault escalated, he was quick to abandon his fellows and look out for himself, spending much of his time hiding while the other Residents murdered each other. After the Staff left and the remaining residents descended into their frenzy of violence, he continued to hide and take what he could to survive without committing himself to a fight. The end result of all this was that he was the last of the residents left alive; if fact, for some time he sustained himself by feeding off the dead. His final fate was unknown, but it can be assumed that he eventually starved to death Category:Vaults Category:Places Category:Iowa